To Say that Gary Allan has had an eclectic career would be an understatement.   He started out with a Bakersfield-meets-Nashville Honky Tonk sound with Used Heart For Sale and moved onto more mainstream fare with It Would Be You before breaking through with the Gold-selling Smoke Rings In The Dark, an album that showcased a classicist approach to record making.  The album was then followed-up by Alright Guy an album which married the mainstream of It Would Be You to the classicist of Smoke Rings.   This approach continued on his third Gold album in a row with See If I Care.  Around this time Used Heart went gold.  Tough All Over came next and this was an immensely dark and personal record that found Allan mourning the loss of his wife and mother of his children.  It was dark, personal and just about as close to the bone as any mainstream album could get.    From here Gary sent Greatest Hits to market and was followed quickly by his last album, Living Hard.  Aside from the sophomore slump album It Would Be You (which, to be fair, did feature a Top 10 hit and was released just before his label was folded into sister label MCA), Gary Allan has consistently recorded and released strong album after album (while somehow getting hit after hit on the radio despite being wholly different than ‘mainstream.’

This trend continues with Get Off On The Pain, a record which reconciles parts of virtually every part of Gary Allan’s career.  First single “Today” didn’t score a Top 10 status but the heart wrenching ballad continued to keep Gary on the radio and is now being followed-up by the title track, a song that is as real as anything off the Tough All Over  and as rockin’ as the Living Hard album.  “Kiss Me When I’m Down” is an insanely romantic record while “That Ain’t Gonna Fly” rocks with the best of any country or rock tracks coming out of Nashville these days.  The production of the record is killer and serves to enhance everything that makes Gary Allan one of country music’s true gems.  The final four tracks on the record, all co-written by Allan, are where he bears his heart, body, soul and mind.

IF there’s an artist recording mainstream country records who is as real as Gary Allan, I have yet to see them and if you like authentic, yet modern, country music then Get Off On The Pain is just about as good an album as you’re likely to find this year or any year [Note: Gary Allan also has a deluxe version that includes a new track "Long Summer Days" and live cuts of "Right Where I Need To Be," "Watching Airplanes" and "Best I Ever Had"].

You can support Gary Allan by purchasing the CD at Amazon (Deluxe CD) | iTunes (Deluxe).